Key Takeaways
- PwC’s latest survey from CEOs around the world has found that many haven’t seen any financial return on AI investments.
- CEOs are also feeling increased anxiety about whether their business is transforming fast enough to keep up with rapidly advancing technology, like AI.
- On a broader scale, many businesses are yet to implement AI to a large extent across their operations.
According to a survey conducted by PwC, most CEOs haven’t yet seen financial return on AI investments within their businesses.
These findings come as CEOs face significant pressure to adopt AI. Even worse, many also reported being concerned about whether their business is transforming fast enough to keep up with a rapidly changing technological landscape.
Most significantly, the survey concluded that many businesses are yet to make the large scale transformations necessary to adopt AI effectively, confirming that we are still at the early stages of the AI business era.
Companies Aren’t Seeing Financial Return from AI
According to PwC’s 29th Global CEO Survey, most CEOs are not yet seeing financial return from investments their companies have made in AI.
While 30% of CEOs reported increased revenue from AI in the last 12 months, and 26% reported seeing lower costs, 56% say they’ve seen neither revenue nor cost benefits from their investments.
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The survey’s findings are based on responses from over 4,000 CEOs across 95 countries and territories.
Concerns Around AI Business Growth
Despite many not seeing ROI on AI investments yet, CEOs are still concerned about whether their business is transforming fast enough to adapt to technology like AI, which continues to advance at a rapid pace.
Businesses will no doubt be feeling increasing pressure to adopt AI, particularly as key figures within the industry continue to broadcast the technology’s advancements and its future potential.
Indeed, other studies have shown that CEOs remain all in on AI, despite returns not being as significant as expected. But, data has also shown that many AI investments have been made based on wanting to keep up with the hype, rather than to better business operations.
Businesses Yet to Make Large Scale AI Transformations
Even though it might not feel like it, AI is still a new technology, and we’re very much in the early stages of its reign. This fact seems to be confirmed by PwC’s survey.
In fact, only a small proportion of CEOs say they are applying AI to a large or very large extent to areas in their business such as demand generation (22%), support services (20%), and products, services, and experiences (19%).
Likewise, only 53% of CEOs agree that the culture of their organization enables the adoption of AI, suggesting that businesses need to focus just as much on making their environment adaptable to the technology.
As AI grows, it remains crucial that businesses build solid foundations, including clearly defined road maps and sufficient levels of investment.
